


Halloween

by notsafeforowls



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Gen, Halloween
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-16 04:22:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21264995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notsafeforowls/pseuds/notsafeforowls
Summary: Mick gets stuck with kids at Halloween.





	Halloween

**1.**

“I wish Lenny was here.”

Mick pretends that he doesn’t see Lisa sneak some candy out of another kid’s pumpkin-shaped bucket.

“Yeah, so do I.” It’s not really Snart’s fault that Mick’s stuck taking care of Lisa. Snart’s away for the next month and it’s not as if Mick can just send her back to Lewis. Mick knows nothing about taking care of a kid, but he thinks he’s done okay so far. He’s fed her, made sure she goes to school, and he’s even stuck with the job he hates to make sure that she can keep up with ice skating lessons. All Mick has to do is last the next month and then he and Lisa can go back to pretending the other doesn’t exist. Or, rather, Mick can go back to trying to avoid Lisa, and Lisa can go back to annoying Snart to let her go places with them. He’s not a kid person.

“I wish there was snow,” Lisa says as she twirls a few times, her bucket barely missing some poor kid’s head. “It would be perfect if there was snow. My costume would fit right in!”

“You’d freeze,” Mick mutters. She’s dressed in a full skating outfit on Halloween. Except the skates, of course, since that really wasn’t practical. Not that the rest of her costume is practical in any sense of the word. _He’s _freezing, he has no idea how Lisa, at all of nine years old, doesn’t even look like she’s feeling the cold.

“But I would wear the whole outfit and my boots wouldn’t be wrong.” Lisa grabs on to Mick’s arm. “Katie from my class said that her parents have loads of candy to hand out.”

“Where’s Katie’s house?” They’ve already done most of the ones in the neighbourhood. There’s not a lot to be collected and most of the other kids from the nearby apartment buildings have already gone home.

Lisa makes a face and turns to Mick, her eyes wide and pleading. “Six blocks away. Lenny wouldn’t take me last year because it was too far away. He said those houses were for robbing, not for getting candy from.”

Mick sighs, his breath fogging in front of him. He wants to go back to the crappy apartment and go to bed. But Lisa’s giving him that damn look.

“Okay, we can walk the six blocks,” he says. Lisa grins and grabs his arm, pulling him in the direction he assumes that the house is in.

At least the walk will warm them up.

*

**2.**

Mick’s not sure why he agreed to this. For one thing, it’s fucking freezing. For another, he’s got a deadline in a week and he still has to work out two big scenes before the first draft is technically finished. He should be home, warm, writing, not taking Sam trick or treating just because she said _please_ and looked at him with those big green eyes.

She’s got the same kicked puppy look at Haircut when you say no to her, but somehow her having her mom’s eyes makes it so much worse.

Instead, he’s standing on the front porch of Ray and Nora’s house, waiting for them to answer the door while he listens to Nora shouting to Ray about how he needs to ‘watch out for the lights.’ It’s probably another of his experiments. The last one had blown out one of the upstairs windows.

It takes several minutes for the door to open – which is strange because usually when Mick knocks on the door, Sam recognises his knock and almost takes him out with how hard she throws herself out the door to hug him – and Mick’s halfway through asking Nora what the hell took so long when he catches sight of the thing behind her.

“What the—”

“Do you like my costume, Uncle Mick?” Sam asks, peering up at him from under the most ridiculous dinosaur costume that Mick’s ever seen.

She’s wearing a massive inflatable dinosaur costume that’s so tall that the head knocks off the hallway light when she takes a step towards Mick. There’s a tail as well, Mick realises as she gets closer. A tail that stretches out a good four feet behind her.

Oh, and it’s a skeleton. Ray and Nora’s seven-year-old is wearing a giant, inflatable dinosaur skeleton.

“Nice dinosaur, kid,” is the only thing Mick can think of saying because, really, what the hell?

“I’m a diplodocus,” Sam says.

“Why is it a skeleton?”

Sam rolls her eyes. “Because it’s extinct.”

The _duh_ is left unsaid but Nora sniggers.

“Right. Of course. Silly me.”

“Oh, wait, I forgot my bag. Dad! Where’s my meteor bag?”

Mick watches Sam leave, her tail taking out a couple of potted plants that Nora doesn’t even bother picking up.

“So, a dinosaur, huh.” That’s going to be fun to get around the neighbourhood. They’ve got all the houses between Ray and Nora’s place and Mick’s own house to cover. Mick seriously considers trying to only do half of them, but he had promised Sam and, as much as Mick hates to admit it, he can’t break a promise to the kid.

“Don’t ask,” Nora says, pointing to a bottle of wine waiting on the kitchen counter. She flips a coin as they listen to the commotion upstairs. “She’s already trapped her own tail in a door, almost punctured herself on a rosebush, damaged three lightbulbs, knocked over every plant at least twice, and I think she’s going to cause even more damage to poor Mr Preston’s garden gnomes.”

And there’s no avoiding Preston’s house. He has the best candy in the neighbourhood.

“You know, if the costume gets punctured just as you’re coming in the garden gate at the end of the night, it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world…”

“You want me to sabotage your daughter’s costume?”

“I want you to sabotage the nightmare that my husband bought when Sam said she wanted to be a dinosaur for Halloween. Fun thing about that: you can’t manually deflate it. You have to let it go down and the skeleton glows in the dark.”

There’s a loud crash from upstairs, followed by Sam and Ray shouting, “It’s okay!” in perfect unison.

Nora winces and holds up the coin. “Heads or tails?”

“Tails,” Mick says, “and kill the dinosaur, got it.”

*

**3**

“Guess what I am, Uncle Mick,” Mira says as soon as Mick’s in the door. “I bet you can’t guess. Mom and Dad took _forever_ to get it.”

Mick looks Mira up and down. She’s wearing a patterned dress with a blue, yellow, and black design on it – although Mick can see bits of other colours there – and every single inch of visible skin has been painted to match it.

“He’s not gonna get it,” Zari laughs. She’s scrubbing at some of the (what Mick _hopes_ is some kind of) body paint with a baby wipe.

“Uncle Ray got it.”

“Uncle Ray’s an even bigger nerd than your dad.”

“Hey!”

“_Charlie_ got it.”

“Charlie knows all kinds of stuff that no one else remembers.”

“You’re some kind of painting?” Mick guesses. Mira’s one of those kids who likes accurate costumes, so paint has to be involved.

Mira sighs loudly. “But _what_ painting am I?”

Nate and Zari both mouth something that Mick doesn’t catch before Mira turns to glare at them and they both put on innocent expressions.

“I give up.”

“I’m The Starry Night!” Mira puts her arms down to show him the elaborate paint on her arms. “See? I did this all myself and I even remembered to set it this time so I don’t ruin another couch. Mom and Dad even bought me special remover to take it off.”

Mick has no idea what the hell he’s looking at, but it does look like Mira put a lot of work in.

“Nice job, kid.”

“Isn’t it?” Mira gives him a quick, tight hug and starts babbling on about how she copied the design and how she sneaked into Nate’s office so that she could buy things on his computer and make the outfit without anyone knowing – and, really, Mick’s more than a little nervous about how often he’s left the nine-year-old with his laptop now.

When Mira leaves to go to the bathroom before Ava arrives to pick them all up, Zari pokes at Mick’s side.

“Ah, crook of the elbow,” Zari says, examining the smears of paint on Mick’s jacket. “She still forgets that part.”

* 

**4.**

“Did I do too much? I feel like I did too much.”

Mick’s seen a lot of weird Halloween costumes. Other than Lisa’s ice-skating outfit and that year when she painted herself gold and covered herself in glitter, he’s also experienced the joy/horror of: Sam’s dinosaur costume (which he had succeeded in puncturing halfway up the garden path at the end of the night, an action which had earned him a six pack from Nora; Sam’s giant pumpkin costume; too many superhero costumes that were a bit too realistic (Mick still has a scar from Sam hugging him while she was wearing the miniature A.T.O.M. costume) but this one… This one takes the cake.

There’s no way that Ava _hasn’t_ done too much with Freddie’s costume. For one thing, Mick’s seen train costumes for kids before. They’re stupid little boxes with straps that go over the kid’s shoulders. Simple. They don’t usually have additional carriages that are raised on wheels which are dragged behind them. Or lights.

“I never had any real Halloweens until Sara threw that Halloween party.” Ava winces, probably remembering the hangover. “When he said he wanted to be a train for Halloween, I got a little bit carried away. I just wanted him to have a good Halloween.”

It’s a good costume, even if Freddie’s already bruised the toes of every single adult at the party, and if Mick’s sure that Freddie’s going to end up running over another kid before the night is over. Sam is showing him how to get in and out of rooms without taking lumps out of the door frames. Her costume – a supernova, apparently - is more subdued this year, but she leaves glitter on everything she touches. Mick’s going to be trying to get the glitter off his clothes for a month. Mira is using adding names to the carriages with a bright silver paint pen. She’s another painting this year, something with a lot of blue and yellow. She’s already stained Mick’s jacket.

“Kids need a good Halloween,” Mick agrees. It’s not as if he ever had any good ones as a kid, or even for most of his life. In fact, his best ones have been when he’s stuck with the kids. Or the other Legends. "He likes the costume."

"Sara's worried about how we'll convince him to take it off."

Mick's about to say that he'll take it off eventually when Freddie pulls a little handle next to his head and a horn sounds.

"What?" Ava asks when Mick stares at her incredulously. "I did say I went overboard..."

**Author's Note:**

> Fun (or horrible) fact: The Starry Night costume and the train costume are both based on things that people I know had as Halloween costumes when they were kids.


End file.
